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What is Important for Startups – Products or Sales?

Tag: tips and tricks

What is Important for Startups – Products or Sales?
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

What is Important for Startups – Products or Sales?

Whether a business should focus on perfecting its products or on boosting sales is the eternal question faced by entrepreneurs. The dilemma has given rise to the concept of Minimum Viable Product or MVP where instead of trying to wait until the product is in faultless stage, the business decides to market it and continues with the improvement process. Here are some of the thoughts to help you decide whether your business should strive for the perfect product or for higher sales.

  • Focus on Product: It is believed that a large number of companies fail due to different factors related to their products or services. In many cases, the companies launch products nobody had demanded. In other cases, the product may simply not be up to the mark, that it may not serve the function it claims to serve. Therefore, it is important to understand the market and its requirements. The business should then focus on developing a product which can meet the market needs in an efficient manner. The firm may decide to launch the product with certain key features and then may continue to fine-tune it. For startups, product improvement is a continuous, never-ending process.

 

  • Work on Value Added Services: As important as it is to get the product just right to fulfill customers’ requirements, it is also imperative that proper attention is paid to allied services such as logistics, after sales care, etc. For startups, liquidity and funds are highly crucial factors, forcing business to release the product as early as possible. In such cases, the enterprise may enhance customers’ utility by providing them with value added services. Empathetic customer care services can lead to higher customer satisfaction by addressing several concerns and issues. With the help of add-on services, the business may be in a position to launch the product at an early stage and still gain loyal following.

 

  • Business Life Cycle Stage: The decision regarding the product launch is dependent on several factors including the life stage of the business. For a startup, cash inflows are highly important as these enterprises are generally dependent upon outside funding for carrying out their operations. For early stage ventures, it is a matter of survival to get a product in the market so that a steady stream of revenue may be generated. This stream is then used for meeting various expenses of the organization. So, while a mature business may delay the launch of the product till it is perfected, new and fledgling organizations are bound to follow the concept of Minimum Viable Product.

 

  • Test the Market: As a young business, you might be tempted to get your product out in the market. However, apart from the product and its features, it is also important to gauge the maturity of the market. This implies that the market should be ready for the product. Any product, if launched in a pre-mature market, is bound to fail. One of the biggest examples in this regard is the various early attempts made by technology companies to launch smartphones. However, these launches failed as the markets were not mature enough to accept smartphones. Further, the infrastructure required for proper functioning of the phones was also not available. Therefore, ensure that the market is ready for your product.

The crux of the discussion is that a startup requires both a perfected product and sales revenue. It is the striking of balance between these two goals which ensures the long term survival of an organization.

7 years ago
Build a High Converting Landing Page
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Build a High Converting Landing Page

A landing page is your first introduction to the client and as the saying goes, first impression is the last impression.  In order to ensure that not only the customer is persuaded to browse the website but also to purchase online goods and services offered through the website. Your eCommerce business may achieve new heights if you are able to achieve high conversion on your landing page. Here are a couple of tips that may help in boosting landing page conversion rate.

  • Understand the Purpose: for creating an impactful landing page, it is imperative that you recognize the true rationale of a landing page. Unlike a product page, the landing page is aimed at inducing the visitors to take an action. Such action may be in the form of signing up, making a purchase or such other deed. In this way, a landing page is meant to be more specific than a product page, which is generally more generic in nature. Thus, for the purpose of higher conversion rate, your eCommerce business may decide to have multiple landing pages, catering to the requirements of specific market segments.

 

  • Reinforce the Call to Action: As explained above, the main purpose of the landing page is to make visitors take an immediate action. Therefore, the landing page should be focused on reinforcing a single stream of call to action (CTA). If there is any confusion regarding the real purpose of the landing page, then it may lead to higher bounce rate, reducing the efficiency of your business. Further, the method to perform the action should be clearly laid out. For example, if your landing page’s main CTA is to invite people to sign up for the newsletter, then the buttons required for such sign up should be prominently visible on the page.

 

  • Personalize: custom designed landing pages are a major key to success for eCommerce businesses. The main benefit of this approach is that it allows you to be more customer-centric and the resulting landing page is more amenable to the needs of your clients. Such personalization may be done on different basis, depending on the segmentation of your main market. While initially such personalization may seem cost prohibitive but in the long run, it allows the business to yield high quality results and optimizing the performance. It is also important that the landing page allows easy performance of the task. For this purpose, multiple buttons or fields to accomplish the objective may be provided.

 

  • Focus on Content: for creating a persuasive landing page, it is important that you choose the content carefully. First off, the material you provide on the landing page should be highly targeted. Apart from following the usual SEO rules, you should also ensure that the material is presented in an easy to navigate manner. Further, the headings and subheadings should be designed to grab attention. While the headline should generally be brief, the subheadings may be used for providing further information about the products and services. Overall, the content should be in sync with the requirements of the targeted market segment.

 

  • Keep it Simple: keeping in line with the general theme of the landing page being specific and targeted, it is advised to the keep the page design and navigation system simple. This generally means that the clutter on the page should be avoided. The material provided on the page should be streamlined and unambiguous. Further, the direction for proceeding should also be straightforward and easy to follow. The page layout and content should be such that the visitor is not inundated with multiple choices, making it difficult for them to arrive at a decision. So, ideally the page should have only limited number of highly targeted options available, so that the customers can make quick decision.

Landing pages are an important ingredient of any eCommerce website. The conversion rate of these landing pages can vitally affect your top line and bottom line. The optimal use of landing pages may provide a necessary impetus to your online business with minimal effort. The above provided guidelines may be incorporated to ensure the high conversion rate for your eCommerce website landing page.

7 years ago
7 Habits of Successful Small Business Owners
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

7 Habits of Successful Small Business Owners

Owning a business is a dream come true for a large number of people, but it is an onerous task. As a small business owner, you are not only required to manage various facets of your business but also to ensure that these tasks are accomplished with optimal efficiency. Here are some tips to help you perform the best as a small business owner.

  • Focus on Customers: One of the most important factors which distinguish successful small business owners from run-of-the-mill ones is their ability to focus on customers. For the longevity of the business, it is imperative that the market is identified in a definitive manner. Such identification helps in devising business strategies and policies which are most amenable to the needs of the customers. Such focus on the market and customers is helpful in ensuring the long-term survival of the business. With unwavering focus on the clients, the business is able to develop a reliable customer base, which is crucial for the growth and survival of the business.

 

  • Focus on Employees: While focus on customers is vital, it is also important to take good care of the employees. No small business owner may become successful without the aid of diligent team members. By cultivating good leadership traits, a small business owner may motivate their team to give their best. Such practices help the business become more efficient and thus, lucrative. Happy employees are also helpful in making an enterprise more stable. For creating a strong team, a small business owner needs to develop people management skills. They should be able to delegate tasks effectively to ensure the timely achievement of goals in an efficient manner.

 

  • Be Adaptable: A successful small business owner needs to be adaptable so as to pivot the business in response to changes in the surrounding environment. Current business scenario is highly volatile and tends to change frequently. Small business owners may use technology and other tools to remain updated about the latest developments in their industry segment. Small businesses may also collaborate with service providers to ensure that they provide the latest services to their clients. PayTabs can help such enterprises in offering easy-to-use and smooth online payment platforms. The ability to leverage technologies to enhance their business is one of the biggest qualities found in successful entrepreneurs.

 

  • Network: Networking is highly important for small businesses so that they can leverage their resources. Small business owners may look for mentors in their specific fields who can provide them with invaluable advice. Networking also allows the businesses to avail expertise in technical areas. It is important to develop relationship with peers and advisers to fully harness the potential of the business. For this purpose, the entrepreneurs may join industry chambers and other such associations. Various meets and expos are also good venues for meeting peers and networking with them.

 

  • Maintain Work Life Balance: Starting and running a small business can be a lonely journey. Therefore, it is important to ensure that your personal life does not suffer on account of your busy schedule. An entrepreneur needs to wear several hats at work and that may prove to be exhausting. In many cases, such excessive workload may lead to burnout, putting the entire business in jeopardy. The concept of work life balance should also be extended to the employees so that the entire team is able to offer their best to the organization. You may also introduce workout classes or sports sessions at the office so that the team may remain physically fit. Such activities will also provide them with a reprieve from routine tasks.

By inculcating above-mentioned habits, any person can enhance their business acumen. These habits will make the process of running a challenging business more manageable. Apart from developing these traits, small business owners may also avail services of technology partners to run their enterprises in a smoother manner. Incorporating services provided by outfits such as PayTabs is one such example of the collaboration which can bring drastic changes in the online payment system of a small business.

7 years ago
Create a Loyalty Program in 5 Easy Steps
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Create a Loyalty Program in 5 Easy Steps

Whether you have set up a new business or are looking to expand your existing one, creating a loyalty program can help you achieve your target.  A good loyalty program can help you in creating a sustainable customer base. As it is far more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one, a loyalty program can be help in running a business more efficiently. Here are the top tips to create a loyalty program which will keep the customers coming back.

  1. Know your Customer Base: In order to create a loyalty program which is just right for your business, it is important to know your customer base well. Some of the most pertinent questions which are required to be answered are the buying capacity of the customers, the type of products bought by them, and the duration for which they have been your customers. Answering these questions will allow you to make more objective assessment of your customer base and fine-tune your program appropriately. Loyalty programs are most suitable for businesses which experience recurring orders at reasonable business intervals. Also, different enterprises require different types of loyalty programs.

 

  1. Decide How to Reward: Rewarding your loyal customers well is the key to the success of a loyalty program. Once you know the main features of your clients, you will be in position to select the most appropriate type of rewards to be offered. It is common wisdom that customers respond more favorably to frequent rewards, even if they are smaller in size. Similarly, rewards in the form of discounts or cashback are also more popular with clients. The businesses are also advised to take a conservative approach towards the rewards as it is far easier to increase these prizes in the future than to decrease them.

 

  1. Keep it Simple: Since a customer loyalty program is long term in nature, it is important to keep it simple. The program should be designed in such a manner that is not only sustainable but also requires minimal resources for its operations. It should also provide positive experience for the clients. The signup process for the program should be self-explanatory and there should not be any ambiguity about the rewards. It is important that the clients are able to anticipate the rewards that they are entitled to so that they do not feel being taken advantage of. It will also make it easier for the employees to explain the program to the customers. All the expenses or qualifiers should also be stated upfront.

 

  1. Leverage Promotional Tactics: While it is important to keep the program simple, it is imperative that some of the time-tested promotional tactics are embedded in the program. The businesses may benefit immensely from endowed progress effect where the customers are provided with ‘bonus’ to give them a sense of quick achievement. Other tactics such as exclusive invites to certain events and premium services may also be used to entice customers to sign up for the program. It should also be ensured that there is proper customer care service available to attend to any query raised by your clients.

 

  1. Use CRM Tools: For running an efficient customer loyalty program, it is important to not only set the goals and budget but also to monitor and measure the progress on a continuous basis. This task may become burdensome over a period of time, so you may think about taking help of Customer Relationship Management tools for this purpose. These tools can help you in tracking your customer interaction and analyzing the results of the loyalty program. Such analysis helps you in making prompt changes to the program to improve its efficiency. You should also ensure that your customer loyalty program does not cannibalize your new client acquisition initiatives.

 

Loyalty programs may help a business in retaining its customers and generate repeat business in an efficient manner. However, it is highly important to customize the program to suit your specific business objectives and customer base. It is also pertinent to note that loyalty programs are good for big and small businesses alike. So, do not ignore this vital tool to boost your client base.

7 years ago
Top 7 Most Common Merchant Account Complaints that Can be a Red Flag
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Top 7 Most Common Merchant Account Complaints that Can be a Red Flag

While choosing credit card processors, it is important to determine the value you are going to drive from them. Simply considering the lowest price quote may not lead to good value for your money. Rather a lower price quote can be a big trap. The overall experience and value offered by your payment processor is something that counts in the long run. So before you take any decision, properly assess the potential risk and rewards associated with your decision. In order to assess the risks associated with a processor, the best way is to browse through the online complaints against the processor posted by the merchants.

Yes, when you analyze those complaints, you will find that some of them are regular complaints, whereas some might be genuine red flags. Here, you should focus your attention on the red flags because these are the things that will help us take an informed decision.

1. Complicated contract cancellation

Many processors charge an early contract termination fee, but it happens when they charge an annual fee. If the processor doesn’t charge an early cancellation fee, they might be charging on month to month, which is far better than the annual contracts, if you are using their services for the first time. Charging an early termination fee is actually an unfair business policy. They make their cancellation process so complicated that when you decide to cancel, they keep you bouncing from department to department till you finally give up. It is also important for the merchants to get the contract cancelled in writing, because sometimes the processor will continue to charge you despite your verbal agreement to cancel the services.

2. Volume and nature of complaints

The ratio of number of complaints to the processing volume also does matter. While scanning through complaints, it’s important to remember that payment processors with 1000 clients and 100 complaints cannot be compared with a payment processor with 10000 clients and one hundred complaints. Also have a look at the common complaints. If you happen to see a number of complaints around a common issue, it can be a red flag.

3. Misleading advertising and unethical sales practices

These are some of the most common complaints made by the merchants all over the world. The underlying reason for these practices is the excessive focus of payment processors on sales. They have tiered pricing systems and the advertised rates are often not the effective rates, because many merchants are disqualified for the advertised rates. These are some of the most deceptive techniques used by the salesy payment processors. It is advisable to go through the fine print and not rely on what their sales representatives claim or say, because these guys are under extreme sales pressure and they often provide false facts to the customer. The same is true about independent retailers. Beware of their deceptive sales techniques.

4.Unresponsive customer support

Sometimes the independent agents promise a lot while closing a sale, but once they close it, the focus shifts to the next sale. They ignore their existing customers, so the customer support takes a backseat and the merchants are thrown from department to department for minor issues. It leads to huge frustration. So never go for the lowest price quote; take the feedback from your friends and colleagues and also browse through the reviews online, so as to make sure that the payment processor you are dealing with offers handy customer service in time of need.

5. Non-cancellable lease agreements

Leasing POS terminals or payment gateways can actually turn out to be far more expensive than buying them. Certain processors force you to make the payment for the entire lease term and therefore they make the contract non-cancellable. Ultimately, their actual cost turns out to be many times more than the actual buying cost of the gateway or processor.

6. Unfair charges and high fees

Most of the complaints revolve around unfair fees and charges. Some payment processors charge their merchants on the pretext of early termination or PCI compliance. For example, the standard fee for early termination is around $400, but you will find several merchants complaining online that they have paid much more in the name of early termination.

7. Keeping the charges hidden
One of the most deceptive techniques used by these payment processors is that they keep many of the charges and fee structure hidden and undisclosed. These charges come as a surprise to the merchant.

If you research a bit, you will find that many payment gateway providers are happy to offer you no PCI and no early termination fees. There is no point paying this fee, which can turn out to be too high if calculated as a fixed percentage of the actual contract.

Final Thoughts
The payment gateway provider is also a business owner with possibly a lot of issues, sales pressure and unethical practices by their staffers; so discuss everything during the negotiation and see the fine print. If you are not happy and satisfied, decide not to sign the contract.

8 years ago
PayTabs
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